Auren Hoffman is Zelig

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It's hard to keep track of Auren Hoffman. For a start, he has as many professional associations as conmen have aliases: he's founder of a company called Rapleaf, which puts out Upscoop and Trustfuse, not to be confused with Lead 21, the conservative networking group he chairs, or Brightroll, where he's a co-founder, or earlier ventures such as Stonebrick and Bridgepath. (I'd say that branding was Hoffman's true calling were it not for the fact that these names seem randomly generated concatenations of one-syllable Anglo-Saxon words.) Maybe there's more than one of him — which would help explain recent sightings on both East and West Coasts.Last week, for instance: as Peter Thiel's party planner, the bi-coastal entrepreneur organized a salon at the financier's Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan; while signing up for Thursday's web-rollers poker game back in San Francisco. And who's one of the hosts of May 3rd's rooftop party in celebration of New York's entrepreneurial community? Auren Hoffman. Like Zelig, the character in Woody Allen's movie, he inserts himself into every frame. Says one of the guests at his upcoming New York appearance: "Auren Hoffman is everywhere. What is his deal? I don't know anything about him other then the fact that he seems to know everybody."